Do you speak English and are you confused about what’s going on on this website? Let us tell you.
You’ve stumbled upon Leafplan which is a project in The Netherlands set out to find the practical use of the electric car. From how to get a charge point at your house to actual range calculations and experiments like charging the Nissan Leaf while being towed is all part of this year long experiment.
Live tracking and video
We’ve outfitted a Nissan Leaf to the brim with all sorts of live tracking and video tools. This enables you to see exactly where the Leaf is, what’s going on, and who’s driving it.
For example you can see the Leaf on Google Maps with a color coded route showing the battery life (green = full / red = empty). We also found a way to display the actual current battery status on the website which is updated every 15 minutes. So you can see exactly how much range is left and when the Leaf is charging. Last but not least it has live streaming video directly from the car by three camera’s showing the driver and where the car is going. (at this time this feature is not live yet but will be soon)
Sponsoring
The Leafplan project is sponsored by Leaseplan. We have no involvement with Nissan in any way to guarantee independent reporting about the Nissan Leaf and electric driving in general. It basically comes down to: if it’s crap, we will call it crap!
Specials (a.k.a. stunts!)
Besides giving you a first hand look how it is to drive an electric car we also will do some experiments some call crazy and others brilliant.
Tow to charge
One of the first ones we did was seeing if we could charge the Leaf by braking while it was being towed. It’s been picked up by blogs like Jalopnik and Autoblog and has generated quite a stir. You can watch the video below.
Climb a Tour de France mountain stage
Vincent and Gaby Zwaan wanted to see how the Leaf would do in the mountains, so they chose a whopper of a course: a Tour de France mountain stage, a 68-mile knee-buster with three monster climbs — including an 8.5-mile slog up the famed Alpe d’Huez. The stage has been won by such greats as Marco Pantani, Lance Armstrong and Andy Hampsten.
Yes, the descents provide a chance to recoup energy through regenerative braking, but we’re talking about battery-killing ascents with an average pitch of 7 to 8 percent. So how’d we do? Check the video below. This story was featured on blogs like Wired and Autoblog.
